Loading...
Distracting information can interfere with learning when the content of the distractor is similar (e.g., pictures of faces presented to teachers while they are memorizing the faces of their students). Researchers in the U.K. examined paradoxically improved memory with unrelated distractors in five patients with temporal lobe epilepsy and bilateral hippocampal sclerosis (BHS).
Study participants had to memorize varying numbers of photographed scenes; this learning period was followed by a delay (1–45 seconds) during which a picture of a face was presented; afterwards, participants saw a photographed scene and had to decide whether they had seen it during the learning period. BHS patients' memories of the pictures became increasingly impaired …